A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'

Public schools helped create the idea of America and inculcate Americans with a few rudiments of knowledge. To judge by that very American item, the Internet, a few rudiments is all anyone cares to have.

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.

The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.

The big question is how you pay for it. It's the best idea I've heard so far. We're moving in that direction, but we want to make sure it's put together well.

You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city - you don't need to go to Beirut for that - but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective.